Anthracite miners cling to endangered way of life

The few anthracite miners left cling to an endangered way of lifeBattle against stacked odds

HELEN O'NEILL, Associated Press

Published 6:30 am, Sunday, November 28, 2004

HEGINS, PA. - The scars are barely visible. Only in the evenings, when the men wash away the day's grime, do they come to light.

But the strangest thing about the scars is their color.

They are a deep and startling blue.

They tell a story of a dark, dangerous world that men cling to, women fear, and sons stubbornly follow their fathers into, even though there is little money, little future and very little hope.

It is a world outsiders rarely see. Like the scars, it is largely hidden.

There are perhaps 100 independent anthracite miners left in Pennsylvania, working their tiny family mines — blasting and shoveling coal by hand.

They work against the odds. There is little market left for anthracite, a hard clean coal that once heated most of the homes in the eastern United States. Bituminous coal, dirtier but easier to mine, is cheaper. Machines do the work in big company-owned mines. Power plants and steel mills buy the cheaper coal.

So fewer and fewer men crawl into the coal holes.

There are just 12 family anthracite mines left in Pennsylvania, down from 60 in 1995 and 140 a decade earlier.

"We're dinosaurs," cries David A. Lucas, a barrel-chested, 53-year-old miner known as David A., whose father and grandfather mined the "hard coal" before him, and whose 29-year-old son, David "Junior" Lucas, would too if only he could make a living doing so. Instead, Junior has turned to welding.

Deep inside his mine, the elder Lucas' eyes pierce the dark.

"In a couple of years," he said, "we'll be extinct."

Never easy

They are descendants of bootleggers, miners left jobless after the Depression and the coal strikes of the early 20th century, who in desperation sank shafts on the abandoned workings of the big collieries. At first they were prosecuted, but over the years agreements were worked out, and the bootleggers became legalized.

Ties to family are one reason they fight for a way of life that seems doomed.

In this particular week the Lucases mine about 75 tons of coal, which they sell to a local processing plant for $35 or $40 a ton. After expenses, they each take home about $75, though the amount varies each week.

The Lucases have lost count of times they have been cited for violations of safety, health and other regulations — citations they claim are often frivolous.

A disappearing profession

One hundred years ago, more than 100 million tons of anthracite was being mined from this region.

Today, the neat row houses of the miners cling to the hills, while the ruins of old collieries sink, ghostlike, into the mountains.

Anthracite production is down to about 2 million tons a year, much of it from a few large strip mines. The independent deep mines produce about 200,000 tons.

"Ten years ago I thought there was a future," said Cindy Rothermel, sitting in a shanty by the entrance to the Pottsville mine she owns with her husband, Randy. "No longer," she said.

Just a few years ago, there would have been 10 miners bustling about the shanty. Today the Rothermels employ just four, including their 28-year-old son, Randy "Boo" Rothermel Jr.

Cindy has spent her life in the mines. She picked rock to pay her way through college. When pregnant, she shoveled sludge. At 49, she knows the history of the mines — and the heartache — as well as anyone.

She lost her father in an explosion when she was 12. Several years ago, she almost lost her son in a blast. Coal dust stanched the wound.

It was the worst day of Cindy's life.

And yet, she understands the mines' pull.

Hope for the future

Across the valley in Good Spring, Mike Rothermel, Randy's brother, runs a breaker, which processes coal, washing it and sorting by size. His customers have included industrial plants in Florida, Venezuela and Germany, and lately U.S. steel plants hurt by the shortage of (bituminous) coke.

As the price of steel rises, Rothermel hopes to tap more of that market. But he has bigger plans: He wants to open a new anthracite mine.

Rothermel's hope is that he can build a machine, similar to those used in bituminous mines, that will dig out the coal more safely and speedily. With anthracite, the problem has always been to design a machine that could tackle the steep pitch of the veins.

Rothermel, 42, has a personal reason for wanting his new mine to work.

Once, he owned a beautiful mine. Officials pointed to it as an example of clean, safe mining. They used it to make training videos. Today Rothermel's mine lies idle.

It has a ghost, one Mike Rothermel feels all the time.

In 1998, his nephew Gary "Chirp" Laundslanger, died in an explosion here. Chirp was 23, married with a baby and another on the way. He was like a son to Mike.

After Chirp's death, Mike closed the mine for good and swore he wouldn't mine again unless he could find a safer way.